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Note: If you actually play Phantasy Star Online, you may want to use another memory card for this. Also, you only have to initialize your memory card once, not before each rip or game load.

Step 1: Boot Phantasy Star Online Game Disc
Pretty self explanitory.

Step 2: Setup Network Profile

When prompted for the TCP/IP settings, choose manual, do not auto-disconnect, and enter an IP address of 192.168.1.32 with a subnet mask 255.255.255.0 and a default gateway of 192.168.1.100. For the Primary DNS server,

enter 192.168.1.100. Start the PSUL utility on the PC side with the following DOS prompt command: "psul -s". This

make your PC into a sort of Phantasy Star Online game server. Now start an online game using the character you chose and the DOL file will upload to your memory card allowing you to transfer game data to and from your PC.

Step 3: Configure TCP/IP on your PC

Access the TCPI/IP properties for the network card on your PC and change the IP address to 192.168.1.100

with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. No default gateway is required for this to work.

Step 4: Create a Character for Online Play

Next, create a character. It really doesn't how or which character you choose. When prompted for your hunter's license, enter anything you wish. It also might be handy to select the save password to memory card as well so you don't have to enter it each time.

Step 5: Start it all up

On your PC, run "psul -s" at a DOS prompt. It should then say waiting for connection or someting to that effect. Next, start an online game of Phantasy Star using the character profile you chose. It will then try to connect to your PC. If successful, your PC will display the messages "Saving user info on memory card..." and

Step 2: Start Gamecube ISO Ripping Server Run the Gamecube ISO Ripping Server tool on your PC you configured above. Select the destination folder and name for the Gamecube game image file to be created then start the utility. You should get a message stating that it is waiting for a connection.

Step 3: Start Phantasy Star Online game in online mode
Start Phantasy Star Online in online mode. It will connect to the server running on the PC and start downloading the ripper code from it. When this is complete, a red screen will appear on the Gamecube and shortly thereafter, you will be prompted to insert the disc you want to rip within 10 seconds. Do this, and once the 10 seconds has passed, your PC will start downloading the image from the disc. When complete, you should have a game disc image on your PC approximately 1.4GB in size. Approximate download time is about an hour or so.

Start the Paradox GC Disc server on your PC. Select the correct IP address for the Gamecube and the Gamecube disc image file you wish to load. Click start then start an online game in Phantasy Star Online. It should connect to your PC and start executing the game you uploaded.

--------------------

Known Issues:

Remeber you are streaming game data to the Gamecube at 10 Megabits/sec. The broadband adapter is capable of transferring data at 100 Megabits/sec., however, since the good folks at Sega assumed nobody has Internet faster than 10 Megabits, they decided to lock the transfer speed down to that rate. There is currently as of this writing no known fix for this but I hear something is in the works and may be released before Christmas. Games with lots of FMV may run choppy due to peformance issues with the network speed and in-game music is usually affected as well.

One fix that helps in some cases is to remove your memory card when you get the group intro press start screen prior to the actual game executing. To save your progress, insert your memory card when you need to save and remove it when save completes.

In other words, it's fairly similar to how you would copy a Dreamcast game.

Although the disc formatting is proprietary for both the Dreamcast and the Gamecube, being able to access a device in the system, namely the disc drive, can be achieved in a fashion very similar to hacking into a PC's hard disk through a network connection.

However, making functional copies that can actually work in a real Gamecube is a different story. Nintendo took making a proprietary optical format for their system a few steps further than Sega did with the Dreamcast. You would have to fabricate discs with the same physical formatting found on a real Gamecube disc, which would be writing the TOC at the outer edge on RSDL media with the linear track working in the opposite direction of a regular optical disc. I don't know of any DVD recorder, save those leased from Nintendo to their third parites (most likely made by Matsushita Electric, parent of Panasonic), that can do this.

But, that doesn't mean you can't play copies at all. Of couse, it's possible to play backups with emulation. But you sure do need a powerful and screaming fast computer to do it (and one hell of an emulator as well). - Reinhart

Well, that's mostly right, but do you mean are OTP-like pressed (built)? That's only for some special DVD9, for the PS2 for example, on the layer 1 (the secod layer)

For the GameCube, if memory serves me, the track is written backwards, or in a similar direction as a phonograph record. The GC is based on DVD, implementing a 650 nm laser for reading just like DVD, but that's where the similarities end.

Some discs are RSDL (I think) while others are single layer. I should've mentioned that I'm not too clear about whether or not some GC discs were dual layer or not, so I apologize if there is any error. I recall that my brother has numerous GC games, including a few I seem to remember were RSDL, but that has been a while ago.

I have only three GC discs and they are all single layer (a way to see if a disc is single or dual layer is to look at the mint codes. if there's two seperate codes sometimes followed by two seperate barcodes, then it's likely a dual layer).